When it comes to putting your dog’s excessive barking to a stop, just a little bit of training can go a very long way. This is an important fact to recognize because the longer you allow your dog to continue its chronic barking, the more time, effort, money, and frustration you will spend on having to deal with it. When you discover that this is a problem in your pet, it is up to you to start right away and put an end to the behavior. The sooner you start, the sooner you’ll be able to eliminate it.

Pay close attention to the times when your dog is most likely to bark so that you can know how to properly cease the behavior. For example, is your dog barking only when you are not home? Is it occurring when someone comes to the door? Does your dog bark when you leave the house or when you come home again? Is the barking most frequent when your dog is looking out the window and it sees someone walking by your house? Does the barking only happen when it sees another dog in the neighborhood?

Though excessive dog barking may seem like one enormous problem, it’s actually one of many potential problems and you need to find out which one is causing your dog’s behavior. For example, if your dog is only barking excessively when you’re not there, the cause could be separation anxiety. Therefore, you will need to treat that condition and not just the symptom, which is the barking. If your dog is making all the noise when someone walks onto your property, it could be an issue of territoriality. This is a form of aggression and you will need to look into territoriality and aggression training for your dog.

No matter the reason, make sure that you get started as soon as possible. You might find that adding additional tools and forms of training that will help with your dog’s happiness overall can be very helpful. For example, crate training and no-bark collars can help your dog to feel safe and secure when you’re not around, and to teach your dog that the barking behavior is undesirable. When your dog understands the message, it will feel more confident that it knows how to behave properly. As a social animal, this is highly important to a dog.

The main things that you can do to ensure your success are to remain patient and consistent throughout the entire training process.